


Had Things Gone Differently

by spiderfire



Category: Original Work
Genre: Beaches, Family, Gen, Horror, once challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 03:29:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2757908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderfire/pseuds/spiderfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, a mother and daughter went to the beach.  The day did not end as either expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Had Things Gone Differently

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a part of a community writing challenge where community members were encouraged to write a story that starts with the word "once".

Once a girl rambled along a beach. She was pudgy, wearing a pink bathing suit spangled with bright yellow stars. There was a pale yellow ruffle around her hips and while she liked the color of the suit and she liked the stars, what she really loved was the ruffle. The ruffle had caused a tantrum in the store when she had seen it. The ruffle was why she was still wearing the suit now, a year after she had gotten it. The fabric had gone pilly, the color had faded and it pulled tight over her shoulders but despite her mother’s pleas, she still wore it every chance she got.

Had things gone differently, in a few years once she had lost her baby fat and grown into a young woman, she would have protested loudly when her mother pointed out the series of photos that sat propped on the back of the piano. The pictures showed a sun-bronzed girl in the suit, working on a rambling sand castle that she had built late last summer. The mother had framed the series and all winter the girl had looked at them, putting her dirty fingers on the glass, tracing the circuitous rivers and moats she had carved from the sand.

On this day, the girl was on a different beach. Instead of sand, this beach had flat, smooth stones, the kind of stone her big sister could skim across the water and skip eight, ten times before it sunk below the surface. When the girl tried though, there were no skips. The rock flew through the air and then it was lost beneath the surface.

It was still early summer and the girl did not yet have a tan. Her mother had made her stand still to be sun-screened when they had gotten to the beach, but that was hours ago and the lotion had worn off. Had things gone differently, she would have been whiny and grumpy when she went home. She would have refused to eat her dinner and then cried that she was hungry. She would have stood at the mirror with her neck craned ‘round to see the white X the sun had left on her bright pink back. She would have complained that the bath was too hot and hurt and when her mother cooled the water, she would have complained it was too cold and she was freezing.

As it was, none of that happened. The girl had wandered a good distance from where her mother sat sprawled in a low chair, baking her front side while she read a paperback. The girl crouched down and turned over a rock. She let out a squeal of delight and surprise when a hundred little brown rock crabs went scampering sideways for cover. When she ran back to the blanket and scooped up the green pail she had discarded earlier, her mom absently called, “Don’t go too far,” but the girl did not respond. The mother’s voice was lost in the rumble of the waves and wind.

By the time the girl was back, the crabs were gone. She tried turning over another rock. Waves of crabs retreated from the sunlight, a flurry of tiny legs carrying them sideways. They disappeared and tucked themselves into the smallest of hiding spots. Most were quick, but the girl still caught some, dropping them with a quiet plop into the bucket. Soon there were a couple dozen scampering around and fighting for space in the bottom.

When she turned over the next rock, one of the crabs was blue. Bright blue. With a white dot on its back. Her eyes widened and she grabbed for it, catching it between her finger and thumb. She brought it up to her eye to look at it more carefully. How very odd! It waved it’s little claw around at her and then, very deliberately, it reached out and pinched her. Hard. She squealed as she dropped it, stuffing the bleeding finger into her mouth.

“Hey!” she growled, “You come back here!”

An hour later her mother called to her, shouting over the wind and waves. When the girl did not come running, the mother set out down the beach. She soon found the pail, full of sun-warmed water and dead crabs.

The mother stood, clutching the empty pail and called for her daughter.

Peering out from under a rock near the mother’s foot were hundreds of tiny pink crabs, each with a yellow star on its back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Chrissy, Bluedog and the yulechat IRCers who helped me out on this. This is my first stab at non-fanfic in a long time. Thanks for reading!


End file.
